September 2017 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2017/09/302017/10/01

In Other BSDs for 2017/09/30

All the BSD activity for the week was absorbed by EuroBSDCon, I think.

Remember, BSDNow has links to the raw video of EuroBSDCon. (Update: finished video now available.)
BSD Pizza Night in Oregon. Unfortunately too late by the time I found it, but maybe there will be another?
FreeBSD 10.4-RC2 Available.
FreeBSD status report for 2017Q2.
lscpu for OpenBSD/FreeBSD.
The new TNF Board of Directors are installed and patched for 2017. (via)
Do any of the BSD’s work to replace GPL’ed software on the grounds that the GPL is restrictive?
FreeBSD 10.4-RC1 with Xfce4 help.
OPNSense ~~17.7.3~~ 17.7.4 released.
EuroBSDcon 2017 Presentations Available. The OpenBSD ones.
FreeBSD: Building software from ports (1/2).
EuroBSDCon 2017 Reflection.

2017/09/28

BSDNow 213: The French CONnection

BSDNow 213 talks about the just-finished EuroBSDCon, and vBSDCon and other things. The episode 213 web page links to Youtube videos of all the talks, so there’s your evening schedule, filled.

2017/09/27

KDE starting tip

If you are starting KDE on DragonFly, you’ll want to be sure dbus is started too. Mentioning it juuuuuust in case…

2017/09/26

kcollect gains dbm support

kcollect(8) (see previous mention) now supports saving data to dbm files, thanks to Harald Brinkhof.

2017/09/25

KnoxBUG: PacBSD developer Adam Jimerson

If you are near Knoxville, Tennessee, PacBSD developer Adam Jimerson is presenting on package manager porting to the KnoxBUG user group tomorrow night.

2017/09/242017/09/22

Lazy Reading for 2017/09/24

Thinkpad theme, I guess.

More shell, less egg. (via)
Rob Pike’s Rules of Programming. (via)
What’s behind the Linux umask? Well, UNIX umask.
Another ThinkPad Retro sighting. No Thinklight? Well, maybe it’s backlit.
Thinkpad X62. (via)
“HTML email, was that your fault?”
Vim Hates You. (via)
The Most Officialest SkiFree Home Page! (via)
X and NeWS history. “As the guy who single-handedly prevented X from becoming an ANSI standard…”(also via)

2017/09/232017/09/22

In Other BSDs for 2017/09/23

Thank goodness for overflow from last week, because I haven’t had time to read.

OpenBSD Daily Recap.
pfsense vs opnsense vs monowall vs smoothwall vs ?
*nix distros with default shells? Not actually sure what the author’s goal is.
X11 forwarding vs. Virtual Machine.
Lscpu for OpenBSD/FreeBSD. (via)
AMD RX 480 Support?
[NetBSD] buildbot in the binutils-gdb project. (via)
vBSDcon 2017: BSD at Work.
pkgsrc is in freeze for 2017Q3.
NYCBUG is having a Tor installfest on October 4th.
Simulation resources, from the August SemiBUG.
Another BSD, but not for computing: the “Federal Association of Sex Services (BSD)” – read article through.

2017/09/212017/09/22

BSDNow 212: The Solaris Eclipse

BSDNow episode 212 is out and I’m going to link it especially because I’ve been at work instead of posting like normal. Not surprisingly, it talks about the demise of Solaris and about vBSDCon and (links to videos from) BSDCan.

2017/09/182017/09/14

Blind at a BUG

Brandon Werner, will be talking at the SEMIBUG meeting tomorrow night at 7 PM. He programs for a living and is blind, so it should be interesting even just to see his preferred tools.

(Mentioned previously for In Other BSDs but I want to make sure people catch this.)

2017/09/172017/09/16

Lazy Reading for 2017/09/17

I start a new job tomorrow!

Fixing up TS-440s rigs. An interesting hobby.
TODO Group Open Source Guides. (via)
What’s So Bad About Posix I/O? (via)
Xtermcontrol: change colors, title, font and geometry of a running xterm. (via)
ANES: emulate a classic Mac on a classic Amiga. (via)
Dwarf Fortress bugs. There’s so much simulated in the game that the bugs sound like broken reality, not programming problems. (via)
The Universal Aggregator. Everything into maildir! (via)
Inbox-zero via shell mail. (via)
The only safe email is text-only email. (via)
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces. There’s a lot to read here. (via)
books chapter twelve
30 interesting shell commands for the Linux shell. I link this just because I’m amazed that someone built a ‘tac’ program, not because these commands are all equally useful. (via)

2017/09/162017/09/16

In Other BSDs for 2017/09/16

Not sure why, but there’s been a lot of BSD news the past few weeks. I am OK with that.

Late addition: NetBSD’s New York build cluster will be offline beginning Monday for about two weeks, which means no daily NetBSD or pkgsrc builds.

FreeBSD package management with Pkg (2/2).
[Semibug] next meeting: BSD accessibility.
I3 instances and NVMe: booya! Or how you can build FreeBSD from the source in under 11 minutes vs. 12+ hours on a desktop. Is there something like ‘quickworld’ on FreeBSD? (via)
iXsystems, Inc. is offering jobs to Sun/Oracle Refugees. (via)
BSD building/testing machines? (via)
Solaris to Linux Migration 2017. Some BSD mentions in there. (via)
openbsd changes of note 628.
Forward syslogs to a central server using TLS (OpenBSD). (via)
A return-oriented programming defense from OpenBSD. (via)
OPNsense 17.7.2 released.
vBSDCon 2017 Conference Reflection.
Screencasting with OpenBSD. (via)
t2k17 Hackathon report: Ken Westerback on dhclient progress, developer herding.

2017/09/14

BSDNow 211: It’s HAMMER2 Time!

BSDNow episode 211 is up – you can guess at least one of the topics, I’m sure. There’s also an interview of FreeBSD Foundation co-ops – which is neat, because I didn’t realize the Foundation had co-ops.

2017/09/142023/07/09

Booting, UEFI, and text consoles

I installed a DragonFly snapshot on a Lenovo x220 last night. I went for a EFI install, even though the x220 has a “Legacy” option. When I booted, it looked like this:

It successfully booted, but once it hit the kernel load, it started printing to the top of the screen in that lovely repeating pattern you see.

Matthew Dillon helpfully pointed out that the DRM and i915 modules needed to be loaded. Hitting ‘9’ during the bootloader countdown got me to a prompt where I could type:

drm_load="YES"

i915_load="YES"'

kern.kms_console=1

menu

Which brought me back to the boot menu, but this time it loaded those additional modules to support the Intel video chipset – and it worked!

These lines can go in /boot/loader.conf for permanent use.

Update: accelerated X will need a different setup – see my later post.

2017/09/13

More ipfw work

In addition to the already-mentioned ipfw per-CPU state tracking, Sepherosa Ziehau has added per-CPU state tables to ipfw, and his commit documents the improvement in performance/latency. He’s also added ipfw support to sshlockout(8).

2017/09/12

HAMMER2 in the installer

HAMMER2 is now available by default in DragonFly, and can be used in the installation process. (It was possible, but manual, before.) The next DragonFly release should be soon.

2017/09/102017/09/07

Lazy Reading for 2017/09/10

Whee!

Save 418. (Thanks, Tim Darby)
this code very fast. (via)
An early (earliest?) Choose Your Own Adventure book. (via)
books chapter eleven
The Zork CPU. The software engine turned into silicon. Can that be done for SCUMM? Does that even make sense? (via)
An Introduction to Managing Secrets Safely with Version Control Systems. (also via)
Every Programmer Should Know. (via)
Rochester vs. Cupertino. I live in Rochester, and the portrait it paints is accurate. Kodak made a lot of lives better in ways we don’t expect of tech companies today. (also via)

2017/09/092017/09/08

In Other BSDs for 2017/09/09

Already overflowed to next week.

New story: Savaged by Systemd. Lucas, what hast thou wrought?
A few questions about BSD
FreeBSD package management with Pkg (1/2). Applies to DragonFly, too.
OpenBSD Community goes platinum.
OPNsense 17.7.1 released.
FreeBSD 10.4-BETA3 Available.
A Brief History of Solaris (SunOS) Ports. Technically a BSD. (via)
My first patch to OpenBSD. (via)
Getting acme.sh to renew certs via cronjob on FreeBSD
GSoC 2017 Reports: Add SUBPACKAGES support to pkgsrc, part 1. (via)
Best BSD for Kaby Lake w/ Integrated Graphics.
FreeBSD – what processes in what jails are using swap?
LLVM libFuzzer and SafeStack ported to NetBSD. (via)
OpenBSD on the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (5th Gen). There’s a cost-saving tip in there for anyone planning a purchase.
Solaris reported dead again. Illumos is working fine, though.

2017/09/082017/09/08

Kabylake NUC and DragonFly

Matthew Dillon’s been using a Kabylake NUC for a DragonFly workstation and it’s generally working out well. It’s tiny enough to lose on a desk, in my opinion. He added performance details and a screenshot. The Specific Configs page has his notes, recorded, too.

Related laptop tip: If you have a Lenovo Yoga and can’t mount the drive after install, various sdhci modules may be the answer. Update: definitely the answer.

2017/09/07

BSDNow 210: Your Questions, part 1

BSDNow 210 turns the tables and interviews the moderators, along with the normal news summary.

2017/09/06

ipfw improvements

Sepherosa Ziehau has made some improvements to ipfw in DragonFly, moving it to per-CPU state tracking among other things. (I haven’t mentioned just ipfw in foreeeever.)

His commit message describes the improvements. Of most interest: it reduces the performance impact of running ipfw in his tests to almost nothing. Does this translate to ipfw on other BSDs? I don’t know.